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Do you have a number of "New Folder" or "New Folder ##" (where ## is some number) scattered about your hard drive from times when you create a new folder with Windows Explorer's context menu but were too lazy to give the folder a meaningful name? If so, Custom Folder can help.

Many programs have annoying dialog boxes that ask you if you are really sure that you want to do what you just told windows to do. Sometimes these are useful safety features ("Do you really want format drive C?") but often these dialogs are just pointless and annoying. ClickOff with "press" the necessary button to just continue on any dialog box you set it up to watch for -- without actually moving your mouse pointer.

I have written about Taskbar Shuffle before. It is a nice little program that allows you to rearrange buttons on your taskbar by dragging and dropping them. A new version (2.1) adds the ability to rearrange system tray icons (although this requires using a hotkey).

Apple has released a beta of their Safari browser for Windows. While consider a Mac browser for Windows? According to Apple there are a number of reasons, but this is the one that caught my eye:

Blazing performance. The fastest web browser on any platform, Safari loads pages up to 2 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2. And it executes JavaScript up to 2.8 times faster than Internet Explorer 7 and up to 1.6 times faster than Firefox 2.

As most people reading this blog probably know, I've decided not to upgrade to Vista. I would need a new computer and really have no need for one, other than to run Vista. I have, however, upgraded to 1 gig of RAM over the weekend and this has finally allowed me to run Windows and Linux together on one desktop.

Windows Calculator is a joke -- who wants to use the on-screen version of a $5 dollar calculator. Most replacements are far more powerful but kind the "lots of buttons" calculator interface. SpeQ break the calculator-look mode. It looks more like a text editor that lets you enter calculations -- and even say your work. SpeQ can be used by anyone for simple math problems but it is powerful enough to be useful to engineers and scientists.

About a year ago, I reviewed SnIco Edit here at Software Gadgets. It was a nice little icon editor, however, its web site has disappeared and I've recently found an icon editor I like much better: IcoFX.

From the IcoFX web site:

IcoFX is an award winning freeware icon editor. It is an all-in-one solution for icon creation, extraction and editing. It is designed to work with Windows XP and Windows Vista icons supporting transparency.

Bringing up a find dialog box can be a pain in some peograms -- and other programs don't even offer a search feature. HandyFind makes searching text easy in most Windows programs. Type the hot key (control-space is the default) and start typing your search term. The highlight will jump to the first match. Use the arrow keys to find the next or previous match. Esc or a mouse click exits search mode. It's simple, fast, and works in most Windows programs -- a nifty and useful program.

Windows XP has hundreds of settings scattered all over the place. Finding them can be a problem. Most can be reached through Control panel, but some are found in other places most people, including your writer, never can seem to remember when they are needed. Enter Windows in a Box, a freeware program designed to make all these XP setting easily available when you need to find them.

I probably would have killed for a program like this when I was in high school and college. Of course, computers filled rooms back then and I didn't have one.

From the ScholarCite web site:

ScholarCite is a free program that helps you write standards compliant literature references. ScholarCite is very intuitive. Simply fill out some fields, and press "Write". The ScholarCite auto-generator then creates a bibliography entry for your works cited list.